Julie Wright's Blog, page 4

It’s super fun when the doorbell rings and I am still in ...

It’s super fun when the doorbell rings and I am still in black yoga pants and a t shirt with my hair pulled into a bedraggled sort of ponytail. Feet are bare. Teeth are not brushed. Yes, it is after ten in the morning. Thank you for asking. It is that moment when I wonder, “Do I dare answer? What if it’s important? What if my dog bit the pool guy while I wasn’t paying attention? Or what if it’s a random stranger selling girl scout cookies?” At the thought of the cookies, I actually get up to answer the door. The pool guy can take care of himself. I have homeowner’s insurance. The cookie salesman, however, waits for no one.Curses! It wasn’t the cookie salesman. I swear the Girls Scouts of America do not try hard enough to search me out and sell me calories I don’t need but desperately want. Happily, it wasn’t the pool guy missing appendages either. What it was instead was a box on my doorstep. Our postwoman always rings the bell when she’s leaving a package. She is terribly considerate that way.

Inside the box were my author copies of my latest book Victoria’s Promise! HOORAY! The Newport Ladies Book Club series marches ever onward. I love this book. It’s super fun, filled with heart and all those aching love-sicky feelings that a good romance should have. I dedicated it to my ever-inspiring editor, Kirk Shaw, who ditched me to go be a lawyer. He is so lucky I love him and haven’t used the voodoo doll I bought of him when he told me he was leaving me. Actually, I am super proud of him for making good choices for his family and am so grateful that he helped me be the writer I am. Victoria’s Promise turned out really well. I am pleased with my finished written product. Feel free to go see the nice reviews on Amazon. I love people who leave nice reviews. We won’t talk about how I feel about those other people. Didn’t their grandmothers teach them not to say anything when they didn’t have anything nice to say? So sad they missed out on a valuable education. Actually, there’s a lot to be learned in the not-so-nice reviews as well. Anyway, I digress.

The point is that I have my author copies and books in the mail is always super fun. Speaking of Super and books in the mail, my dear friend Marion Jensen has a new book out as well. His title is Almost Super! Legit funny book! Buy it. Read it to your kids. Laugh yourself sick! And feel free to buy my book too. I may not be Lord Byron, but I’m infinitely more entertaining.

Author Copies! And as a fun aside, my book has a doppelganger. The first person to discover the title of my book’s doppelganger will receive a prize. Hint . . . it has something to do with the red bike. Leave a comment with the title to win cool prize.

 

 

A Lesson for Those who Feel Less Than

Strap in. This is a long entry.

I am an author. I am published in a niche market with a niche publisher. In the beginnings of my career I dealt with something very real: prejudice. Other authors who were published with big publishers in big markets assumed they were better than me (and they were right about that at the beginning). Not all of the big authors in my social sphere acted this way–in fact, most didn’t. But I, being young and insecure, assumed they all felt this way.

In the beginning, I didn’t know much. Character motivation, plot movement, story arc, setting–none of that meant anything to me. I wrote a story because I had a story to tell. I became published. So I wrote another story. The publisher acquired that one too.  I learned a lot, edited, became better–much better. I sent my third book to the largest publisher in that niche market and was accepted. It was exciting because I knew the book was good. It thrummed all those emotional strings. The characters were well-developed and the dialogue sang. But I was still in the niche market. And I felt inferior to those published in their huge markets. The thing was that there was a  stigma about writers in my niche not being any good. The rumors were that only hacks wrote in that genre. To be fair to the rumor mill, there were a lot of crummy books put out back then (my first two among them), but there were a lot of great books too. I decided to be part of the solution. I was in with a guild of authors and we decided to change the stigma by raising the quality of literature in our market. We did that through conferences, mentoring, and classes. We did a lot of good. And I wrote more books. And grew in the craft with every one of them.

I was traditionally published.

And felt inferior.

I made the top ten best sellers list in the entire market.

And felt inferior.

I sold out of my first print run and went to a second printing.

And felt inferior.

I had radio, magazine, and newspaper interviews.

And felt inferior.

I won awards.

And felt inferior.

And then one day at a science fiction and fantasy symposium, I met Orson Scott Card. I’m a huge fan of his–always have been. I stood in his line to get my stack of books signed. I became too awed to do much beside slide the stack to him when it was my turn. He tried to engage me in conversation. I think I might have drooled in response. But the person behind me said, “She’s Julie Wright. She’s an author too.”

He stopped signing my first edition of Speaker for the Dead and looked up at me. “You’re published?”

I dug my toe into the tile floor and ducked my head into my shoulders in the shrug gesture you can only manage to pull off when you are desperately insecure.

He must have taken that as a yes because he then asked, “What do you write?”

I dreaded answering, knowing the prejudice among authors, but I replied that I wrote a lot of things but was only published in my niche market.

He frowned. “Did I hear an apology in that answer?”

Which made me hit the mental brakes.

And then he said something that changed me.

“Didn’t you choose to write in that market?”

“Well . . . yeah, but . . .”

“And you’re published in the market you wrote for. There’s no shame in that. Who’s your publisher?”

I told him and he actually looked like he might reach across the table to smack me. “So you’re trying to tell me that you chose to write for a particular market, you’re published with the top publisher in that market, and you’re apologizing?”

It sounded so bad when he put it like that.

I don’t feel inferior any longer, and not just because Orson Scott Card demanded I feel better about myself. I don’t feel inferior because I know I am good at what I do. And I finally realized my previous insecurities were not because those big authors were looking down their noses at me. I felt inferior because I hadn’t accomplished all that *I* wanted to accomplish *YET*. It wasn’t them making me feel small. It was me making me feel small. So this lesson for me has been learned. This was all several years ago. So why am I writing about it all now?

Because whispers like wind shaking leaves have come to my attention of other authors feeling small and insignificant because they chose a different publishing path. They’ve achieved great things. They have succeeded in the spheres where they have ventured. They have sales, fans, some have awards. And they feel inferior.

This post is my request for them to stop apologizing for their accomplishments simply because their accomplishments are different from someone else’s. They have found success in the very thing they set out to do. Forget stigmas. And if you have goals not yet realized, that’s okay. To be going forward, stretching, becoming your best you . . . well, isn’t that what we’re here for?

As Rob Thomas says, our lives are made in these small hours, these little wonders. So make those small hours wonderful. Be happy.

xoxo

 

My New Book! Victoria’s Promise

A luxurious mansion. Thirty stunning bachelorettes. One very eligible bachelor. All of the ingredients are in place for a successful reality dating show, and behind the scenes, Tori Winters is set to pull the romantic strings as assistant director of Vows. Despite her distaste for public exhibitions of love—which spelled the death of her last relationship—Tori intends to give the public exactly what they want: scintillating footage of a bevy of beauties vying for the attention of Christopher Caine. But Chris, a consummate Southern gentleman and the star of Vows, seems almost too good to be true—and soon, even Tori finds herself falling under his spell. Despite legal obligations to avoid fraternizing with the talent, it’s clear her feelings are anything but unrequited. With the support of her friends in the Newport Ladies Book Club, Tori must make a life-altering decision: is she willing to jeopardize all she’s worked for in order to embrace her own fairy-tale ending?

I confess that it’s hard to not call this book Victoria’s Secret since the book that came before this one in the series is Ruby’s Secret and since that is a major national chain with serious brand recognition, but I will overcome this and call the book by the title the publisher has given. However . . . if you ever hear me slip up, feel free to giggle at me and then forgive me. I do not always behave intelligently. Regardless of all that, I can PROMISE that this is a fun read, one you will enjoy, with plenty of heart and laughs. Let the romance begin!

Victoria’s Promise releases to stores January 15th! So be on the look out for it!

Good Writers Use . . .

Good writers use pens. That’s the advice from my tenth grade English teacher, Mr. Cowden. I know I shred this man a lot due to the fact that he singlehandedly tried to put a stop to the writing career dreams of my youth. But I thought of something he’d said all those years ago that struck me as weird today while I edited over some of the new pages I’d written. He said something to the effect of: ”A good writer always writes in pen because it shows they have the confidence and education to know that they will get it right the first time.”

I wanted to be a confident and educated writer. I wanted to be a *good* writer most of all. I wrote with a pen from then on. My first three and a half books were written by hand and all in pen. I have a dozen notebooks filled with pen-scrawled words (and scratched out words and even scratched out pages). It’s been years since my handwritten manuscript days, years since a pen was used for anything more than signing a book.

The computer is my new pen. Bless the smart people who created word processing.

Today, I deleted a whole lot. The deletes made the dialogue smooth, the narrative stronger. And I thought back to that day with Mr. Cowden. I thought back to how on some level I must have respected him as a teacher–must have believed his declaration that good writers use pens. Why else would I write with such an instrument for so many years after his class?

I declare my independence from such bad advice.

Why use a pen when a pencil is so obviously superior? A pencil comes with an editing device called an ERASER. Good writers should use pencils Because good writers know the importance of a good edit. It isn’t about the arrogance of putting an idea down right the first time. It’s about getting it right in the end.

Kanab Writer’s Conference

I am excited to be presenting at the Kanab Writer’s Conference :

http://kanabwritersconference.com/

I’m excited for several reasons.

It’s a great conference for beginning writers due to its low price and the intimate setting. ($40 bucks is a steal.) There will be lots of amazing authors to learn from who will all be teaching amazing classes!
Janette Rallison, my dear friend who lives in Arizona is going to be there! YAY!
Liz Adair is in charge, and she is organized and lovely and will make sure the conference runs with all kinds of awesome.
I moved to Southern Utah and feel a little disconnected from all the writer friends I love so much and this is a chance to see some of them.
I need my own creative well filled.
I am teaching two really awesome classes!

The first class is called Frankenstein: Using all the Parts to Create Something that Breathes. It is a primer for writing and will cover: Dialogue, Emotion, Voice, Character, Setting, and Plot.

The second class is called How to Take the Suck out of Success: Making Castles out of the Bricks Life Throws. This class is about taking away the excuses and following your dreams. It’s  about not giving up. Because let’s face it, sometimes it feels like someone planted booby traps on the ladder to success. Sometimes it sucks. This class will teach how to eliminate some of those pesky traps and ticking time bombs so that success can be a little easier.

I am SUPER excited for this. And with the whole government shut-down (because we’ve apparently sent a bunch of non communicating infants to Washington) Kanab could really use the tourist dollars. The businesses there have suffered a huge loss by the non-existent tourism from the national parks. Since I spent fifteen years running a business that only did well during the tourist season, I feel a great deal of empathy for their plight.

So sign up now! I promise we’ll have fun. And if you want to read about Kanab and their issues with the government shut down, here is a news article:

http://www.kcsg.com/view/full_story/23793695/article-Kanab-Writer-s-Conference-Taking-Place-Oct–25-26-Despite-Gov–Closures?instance=more_local_news1

 

Dear Daughter

My daughter graduated last spring, turned eighteen over the summer, and moved away to begin her own life.

It. Happened. So. Fast.

People always say that. I heard it a million times while the kids were crawling all over my furniture and getting handprints on the mirrors and windows and making me crazy with their “needing” one more glass of water at bedtime. I heard all the voices of those who were older telling me to enjoy it, because it goes by fast.

It didn’t feel fast at the time. It felt like those kids would never be potty-trained. It felt like they would always need bottles, and diapers, and babysitters.

Until they didn’t.

It was when my daughter hit double digits that I realized things were changing. I tried hitting the brakes at her accelerated growing. But she kept growing anyway. I started taking more pictures, realizing I didn’t take enough of them when she was small. Now that she’s gone, I wonder . . . did I tell her everything she needs to know? Did I forget anything Important? She’s in China now–serving a humanitarian mission. I really miss her. She told me we still had a moon in common. So the moon makes me happy.

I used to write her letters–a little journal of her life through my eyes. I gave her the letters and then regretted giving them to her because it felt like I’d lost something in not being able to write to her in that way. So here it is . . . One last letter to my child daughter. The last because now she’s an adult.

Dearest Tjej,

You are beautiful. I used to always tell you that it was more important to be pretty inside than it was to be pretty outside because I didn’t want you to be snotty about the fact that you’re gorgeous. You SHINE with inner beauty. You love people with your whole soul. You protect people who can’t protect themselves. You stand up for what’s right–even when it costs you personally to do so. On the subway train in New York when you faced real hatred and prejudice for the first time, you were one of the few people who tried to do something about it. A train full of adults, and it was you (and your dad) who stood against that cruelty. Everyone else stayed quiet with their heads down–not wanting to be involved, but not you, the thirteen year old. Never you. I hope that fire to protect other people stays with you. People are worth protecting.

When you were little, I heard giggling from your bedroom. You and your two toddler brothers were laughing those great belly laughs–the kind filled with delight–the kind that made me laugh just to hear. I followed the noise to your room and peeked inside. You had on a ballet skirt with lots of little sequins sewn into it. And the way the sun was setting through your bedroom window caught the light off the skirt and reflected it back to the walls, floor, and ceiling. You stood in the center of the room and twirled like crazy while your brothers tried to catch the “stars” you created for them. The world is joy. Be prepared to dance in it.

When you landed in China, you sent me a text to let me know you were safe. This is what you wrote:

Just landed it’s humid and hot and I’m loving it.

I cried at the airport as I watched you walk away.

Of course I cried.

Now that you’re out in the big wide world, did I do enough to prepare you for it? Did I tell you about broken hearts and how they keep beating long after they shatter? Did I tell you that hearts are reparable? Did I tell you you’ll be doing the breaking as often as you’ll be the one getting broken? Love is so many things. It’s fire and ice. Hearts are big places. There is room for a lot of love. I won’t tell you that time heals all wounds. Time doesn’t necessarily heal anything, but it creates distance. Distance offers perspective. Perspective allows healing. But did I tell you not to get lost in perspective? Looking back and looking forward are fine, but do you know not to let them get in the way of being IN the gift we call the PRESENT? Do you know that sometimes you have to straighten up, suck it up, and deal with what comes? No matter what? Do you know it’s okay to fail sometimes? Did I tell you that sometimes you’ll fall down and skin your knees and worse . . . skin your soul? Do you know there are bandages big enough to cover the soul wounds?

And there’s Rocky Road ice cream.

I don’t know if I told you everything you need to know.

You went and grew up–prepared or not. And I am done raising you. (I have loved raising you). When you come home, it’ll all be different. You’re an adult now with real world experience. I won’t be able to give you curfews. I won’t be asking if you got your homework done. I won’t be asking who you’re going with when you leave the house or asking if an adult will be present. You are the adult now. It has been a great eighteen years, Tjej. You three kids are my greatest accomplishments. You have made me so proud and so humbled and so excited to see your future. You will be a great mom. You will be a great wife. You ARE a great person. You will have happiness. And you’ll be sad too. Sometimes things get lost along the way, But I believe in an eternal Lost and Found. Nothing valuable is ever truly lost. You’ll have bad days and dumb days and sideways days and off days. Life is like that. It’s true that there must be opposition in all things. If everything was always good, how would we know what good was? So there must be the bad days. But when those days come. I’ll still be here—still be mom, still loving you.

You’re extraordinary.

Be safe. Be kind. Be happy. And everything works out.

And remember . . . I’m watching you.

Love

Mom

Our last picture together before you ditched me for another country. No really. I’m not bitter or eating too much ice cream . . . It’s fine. Love you madly . . . Miss you crazy

 

Interesting Weird Things

So, a long time ago I had a really terrible day.  It was the day I snapped my ACL and tore all the other ligaments in my knee. It was while I was trying to figure out what to do with my knee that I wrote on Twitter: “What doesn’t kill us gives us something new to write about.” Since then, I’ve used the quote several times, mostly in my own mumblings and rumblings when I talk to myself. Yes, I do talk to myself. I tell my children that talking to myself is the natural result of desiring intelligent conversation.

Last night I was tagged on one of those pictures that float around Facebook with an inspirational or funny quote. I was tagged by one of my writer friends and then asked the question, “When was this made?”

It was a fair question because it was the quote I’d put up on Twitter a couple years ago. And it was attributed to me (which is good, since I did write it, and I still believe it).

The thing is, I have no idea who made it, but the quote is doing the rounds on Facebook and getting some decent traction under it. The whole thing makes me laugh. What’s cool about it is that the facebook page that posted it originally is dedicated to the writing profession and my quote is up there with other authors like JK Rowling, CS Lewis, Stephen King, and Ray Bradbury. I am highly complimented.

Also recently I had a job interview for a job I really, really want. I got to the interview and found that the HR representative and the supervisor over the position I was applying for had Googled me, checked out my website, and found out about me through a little online investigation.

A few years ago, I had surgery. After surgery, I went in for a follow up and found that while I was under, the nurse told the doctor I was a writer. So he looked me up while my innards were flayed open on the operating table.

The point of all this?

You never know who is watching you online. And you never know what little tidbit some other person might pick up and make one of those picture quote thingys. Make sure you aren’t saying things online that will shame you to have attributed to you, or that will lose you opportunities (with jobs, publishing opportunities, etc). And make sure you never write anything online that will tick off your surgeon lest he decides to stitch your spleen to your lungs, because they apparently surf the web when they’re supposed to be working.

Your online presence matters and lasts way beyond the time you originally post anything. The comment that made it to a quote was something I said a long, long time ago, and apparently, it’s still out there.

Be careful with what you say, because you never know who’s peeking over your online shoulder. Creepy? Yes. Flattering? Sometimes. But always totally true.

 

The Story of Us

This is a long story. My twenty-first wedding anniversary was a month ago. I’ve been thinking about it a lot. We’ve been married 21 years. But we’ve been together 25. A quarter of a century has passed since my first date with Mr. Wright. The story should be long, I suppose, since it represents such a long period of time. I met my husband for the very first time two weeks after my fifteenth birthday. I went to the high school yearbook stomp even though I wasn’t technically  “in” high school yet. Our school kept the ninth grade in the middle school. Turns out that no one actually dances at a yearbook stomp. They sign yearbooks. Go figure. It was a sad realization to my wanting-to-dance, fifteen-year-old self.

To get over my grief, I signed yearbooks. Oh sure, I didn’t actually know any of the people whose books I signed. But it was a big high school. They probably didn’t know I didn’t know them. I signed a yearbook for one Scott Wright. I went home and didn’t think about it again.

I met him again on the first day of school my sophomore year. Neither of us remembered the yearbook incident. It was pretty much not memorable. Strangers float in and out of our lives every day. Why focus on any one stranger? It was French class where we became non-strangers. He asked me to move up a desk, and we spent the school year laughing at jokes, becoming excellent friends, and *not* learning the French language. At the end of the year, Mr. Wright asked me to prom. I wore a fancy dress, had my hair done up cute, and felt beautiful for the first time in my life.

He asked if he could kiss me goodnight.

I told him no.

I had my reasons. They were valid reasons, too. I wasn’t a jerk about it. I explained those reasons to him, and to his credit, he took it pretty well. Then, I went inside my house and wept the tears that only a teenage girl falling for a boy could muster. I knew he would never talk to me again. I just knew the kiss was the deal-breaker.

He called the next afternoon to see if I wanted to go to a movie.

And the friendship continued. We did everything together, from taking cooking classes that didn’t do me any good, to him teaching me how to change a tire, to me opening up and sharing my dark and dreary poetry with another person. I admit it now. I was a terrible poet. THAT should have been the deal-breaker. We had water fights–the epic kind, cake fights, ice fights, and even a few real fights. Together, we learned about religion, the environment, and debated the finer points of sunrises and sunsets. We spent hours playing King’s Quest.

We climbed trees, and mountains, and Life together.

One day I kissed him . . . my choice–he’d never approached the issue again. I kissed him, because whenever I looked at him, I couldn’t imagine a day of my life without him. We discovered I’d been the flirty, bossy girl  signing his yearbook. And then he left to serve a two year mission for our church. It was a long two years. And I, being young and foolish, assumed all boys were like that boy and began dating others. LOTS of others. None were like that boy. Which is not to say they were all bad. Some were quite wonderful. Some were kind, some were short-tempered, some were funny, some were quiet, some were respectful, some were creeps. Some were creepers. Some were just good guys that I am still grateful to have had the chance to know. But none were that boy.

I once read an advertisement for Nike–one that talked about a girl growing up. One of the lines in the ad was: I fell in love . . . I fell in love . . .  I fell in love. Then I really fell in love. I did it backwards. I really fell in love the first time around which made the other fall-in-loves somewhat less than what they could have been. Apologies are probably necessary. While he was gone, we both grew. Differently. But still growing. We stretched, reached, and became. He came home, and in spite of all my detours during his absence, his coming home was a homecoming for me as well.

So we got married. We discovered that water fights were more fun than the real fights, that dancing was a sore topic and that taking dancing lessons together would not keep us married. We found that all these years later, we are still Friends which made marriage that much better, that much easier. We learned that he’s a creep when he’s hungry,  I’m a creep when I’m tired, and that we’re the definition of pure evil when he’s hungry and I’m tired at the same time. We discovered that we are genetic super heroes. If we had known that our three kids would all turn out this fabulous, we would have had a dozen. We’ve hiked mountains, swam in oceans, walked over deserts. We’ve caught frogs, colds, and subway trains. We’ve missed deadlines, flights, and Each Other when we’re apart. We’ve opened businesses, closed businesses, moved into houses and out of houses, packed in and out of hotel rooms all over the world. We’ve boarded airplanes, cruise ships, sail boats, ferries, taxi cabs, limos, scooters, subway trains, cross country trains, Disneyland rides, four wheelers, and tandem bikes. We’ve watched fish die, turtles die, dogs die, People die. We hold each other a little tighter when we lose people, some part of us afraid of losing each other. We’ve fought, faded, forgotten, and flared up again. We’ve cried, yelled, whispered, sung to babies, scolded babies, laughed at babies. We’ve laughed. We laugh a lot. I tell him all the time that he stopped being funny over a decade ago, but it isn’t true. He’s hilarious.

Some of my favorite moments with him were the times he wasn’t aware I was watching–the times in the morning when he would take the baby feeding so I could sleep a little longer, where I crept out and peeked around the corner to watch my husband with our little girl–to find him balancing a baby, a bottle, and the scriptures while he read out loud to her. He never misses moments to teach the kids, conjugating verbs, explaining an electrical box, helping them understand directions and maps, being the example of picking up litter and recycling, being the example of being a good human by saying please and thank you and holding open doors and putting away chairs, by pitching in when there’s work to be done. He teaches them to love by loving them. The highest compliment given was by our middle son when he said, “I can’t wait to be a dad, so I can joke around with my kids like this.”

We’ve been sick, healthy, sad, happy, depressed, stressed, excited, elated; we’ve battled diseases and monsters under the beds. We’ve discussed politics, religion, science, literature, and anything else that might give us a good debate. We’ve fought, made up, gone to bed mad, stayed up late talking. We’ve dreamed dreams, fought for dreams, let some dreams die, fought harder for others. We’ve grown up and grown older together. We’ve laughed some more. We’ve even danced–in spite of it not being his favorite thing ever.

Have our lives been perfect? Is every day perfect?    No.     But every day has been perfectly us. The most perfect part?

We’re not done yet.

I’m looking forward to another quarter of a century.

Love you Käre, harifrån till evighet. Jag är lycklig at du är min. Jag älskar dig varje dag.

[image error]

Prom “Forever Young”
1988

New York, Battery Park
2013

 

 

 

School Assemblies for Authors 101

I’ve been doing a lot of school assemblies lately throughout the state of Utah. And I’ve learned some seriously important things. I won’t give you the wretched details of how I came to know all these things, but take my word for it.

The top ten most important things I’ve learned are as follows:

Use the restroom first. Nothing is more wretched than doing the potty dance in the middle of your own presentation.
Wash your hands (duh). And dry them THOROUGHLY. You will want to shake the hands of the principle and the librarian. Nothing worse than soggy palms because you have an aversion to those hand dryers or because you were too hasty in your use of the paper towels.
Make sure you do up all zippers, buttons, etc. Make sure things that are supposed to be tucked in are tucked and those that aren’t stay out.
Keep a kleenix in your pocket in case you need to sneeze. A thousand kids saying, “ewwwwww!” in your presentation when you weren’t purposely trying to be gross . . . well, that’s bad.
Keep a water bottle handy in case your throat gets dry. A hacking cough really throws off a rhythm.
Do a power point–kids are trained to look at the big screen in front of them
Don’t put lame stuff in your power point. Snoring children isn’t your goal.
Be funny where possible, but don’t try too hard. Funny should be natural. If you don’t do funny, then know it can’t be forced.
Do not make your presentation nothing but an hour long infomercial of “buy-my-book”
Make the presentation about THE KIDS NOT YOU!

The last one is the most important thing I can advise. A really awesome author, James A Owen, said something that rang so true to me. He said, “If I am given the attention of five hundred middle-school students for an hour, and only that hour, I’m not going to talk about my books – I’m going to talk about the things that I believe are most important in this life; about things I believe are True, and meaningful, and worth sharing.”

Amen James.

There is very little in my presentation about my books. Seriously. I spend about 2 minutes on my books. My presentations are about literacy, believing in our own potential, believing that each individual human being has something magical and amazing to offer the world. Because I agree with James. If I’ve got an hour, and only that hour, there are way more important messages to give than, “Hey, kid, buy my book.” My presentation is about living without limits on your own awesomeness. Why should it be anything else? What if my presentation is the only place some of those kids ever hear that they can achieve great things? Wouldn’t it be tragic if instead of selling those kids on themselves I was instead trying to sell them on my books?

I had a few assemblies last week where I spoke to over 2000 kids. They were great. The kids were amazing in every way. I love doing assemblies and feeling that rush afterward. At my book signing at the library later that night, I ran into one of my friends who happened to work there. She was blinking in shock at the two hour long parade of kids tramping through her library. She asked me one simple question, “What did you do to make them all come out tonight?”

My answer?

I told them the truth.

I told them they were amazing. That they were brilliant. That they had the right to shine on the world in the same way that the star Antares shines from over a thousand light years away. I told them they had no limits to the great things they could accomplish.

The truth is powerful.

Youth are powerful if they only dare let themselves believe it.

And as writers, we have the power to tell them.

So I guess this post is really a bit of an admonition. I’ve heard many principles sigh and tell me of how disappointed they were in other authors because they felt like they’d yanked the kids out of useful class time just to hear a commercial. They were relieved my presentation was different. It makes me sad that I hear this comment over and over again. Truly consider authors. You have an hour with several hundred kids.

What message do you want to give them?

 

I have an Agent!

I have written thirteen novels. Eight are published, which leaves five unaccounted for.

I wrote them for a different market than the one my awesome niche publisher handles. Five manuscripts moldering away on my hard drive waiting for the light of day and the smell of ink to bring them to real existance.

So, I’m sitting here, wearing my “I love Boston” T-shirt and my favorite comfortable jeans that are slowly disintegrating even as I sit. Holst’s The Planets is playing in the background—though I’m not listening to it anymore.

I just got the call. THE CALL. If you’re a writer, you know what that means. It is one of two things. Either an offer of representation from an agent, or a book deal.

This is the first kind. The offer of representation. The phone is hung up. And I just now realize my hands are shaking. When did they start doing that? Were they shaking while I was on the phone? Or worse. Was my VOICE shaking while I was on the phone? Hands I can hide, but the voice? There would be no hiding that. Sadly—or happily, I will never know either way.

This call means that someone else thinks I am good enough. Someone who isn’t my mom, or my husband, or my kids (after their dad gives them the stern look that tells them they have to like everything I write no matter what). This is someone else. Someone on the outside of my sphere. It’s as if this new person has just walked into that same sphere, sat down, and put their feet up while they grin and ask me how I’m doing?

How am I doing?

I want to throw up.

And scream.

And laugh.

And cry too.

Someone outside said I am good enough. Something I’ve worried over, wrung my hands over, paced over, cried and cried and cried over. Am I good enough? What will I do if I ever discover I’m not?

It’s a relief to hear someone affirm with those sweet, soft words, “Yes. Yes, you are.”

That’s why I want to cry. And throw up. And scream. And Laugh.

Because so often I’ve heard a different answer. So many of my rejection letters have come in saying, “We love your writing, but . . .” “We love your characters, but . . .” “We love your story, but . . .”

I’ve just been looking for a different contraction. I just wanted to hear, “We love your writing, your characters, your story,  AND . . .”

And now someone has.

I don’t know what to do with this information. I don’t dare consider that this new person might be wrong. That will only lead to more pacing, wringing of hands, and crying, crying, crying.

And it’s strange how the reaction for today’s acceptance is so similar to the reactions from past rejections.

All this emotion bubbling over and spilling out. And I want ice cream. Rocky road.

She loved it, AND . . .

AND  . . . today, I have an agent. Not just any agent. I have THE agent, the one I’ve researched and kept coming back to and wishing was mine because she is just that good at what she does and because she is just that great as a human being. Sara Crowe said yes to *me*

And her email right after we hung up? “Hi Julie!  Just wanted to say YAY! Talk soon!”

Yep. After an email like that, it’s a good day. I toast this cone of rocky road to the road I’ve just traveled to get here.  There were rocks—more like mountains with sheer cliff faces, and I’ve tripped and fallen more than I care to admit.

But today . . . it’s a good day

I’ll tell how this all came about later, but for now, the moral of this story?

I didn’t quit.

I’m so glad I didn’t quit.